The dual-process approach to human sociality: Meta-analytic evidence for a theory of internalized heuristics for self-preservation

Abstract

Which social decisions are intuitive? Which are deliberative? The dual-process approach to human sociality has emerged in the last decades as a vibrant and exciting area of research. Here, I review the existing literature on the cognitive basis of cooperation, altruism, honesty, positive and negative reciprocity, and (act) utilitarianism. I conclude by introducing a game-theoretical framework that organizes the majority of the empirical regularities. This framework extends Rand and colleagues’ Social Heuristics Hypothesis to any one-shot game G. The core assumption of this “General Social Heuristics Hypothesis” is that, under intuition, people play a Nash equilibrium of the “real analogue of G”, G^real, while under deliberation people play a Nash equilibrium of G. G^real differs from G along two dimensions: G is one-shot, while G^real might be iterated; the payoffs of G^real might be different from the payoffs of G, although they are ordered in (almost) the same way.

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…For example, animal research has shown detrimental effects of social deprivation and isolation [2,10,11]. Besides social distancing, the pandemic has resulted in many other changes for adolescents, including possible worry about health of family members, fear of death, financial consequences, and worry about one's future [9,12]. Therefore, social changes in the pandemic should be interpreted in the context of multiple system disruptions [13].…”

“…Future studies should employ large, diverse samples to test the robustness of our findings and to test for individual differences (e.g., in giving). A third limitation is that the COVID-19 pandemic might impact the saliency of other emotions than tension and vigor, such as fear (e.g., fear of death or to lose a loved one), which in turn can affect certain forms of prosociality [12]. Future studies should investigate the effect the COVID-19 pandemic on such emotions and assess their relationship with prosocial tendencies.…”

What triggers online help-seeking retransmission during the COVID-19 period? Empirical evidence from Chinese social media

“…Under the dual-process perspective, the former four determinants stay close with the slow and deliberative process while the emotion is akin to the fast and intuitive cognitive process. In other words, retweeting behavior is propelled by "relying on reason" and "relying on emotion" simultaneously [14,31].…”

Gamble for the needy! Does identifiability enhances donation?

“…Diederich et al and Guo et al [29,33] found that shorter declines enhanced the framing effect. While time constraints have shown an impact on preferential choice (frequencies) [34][35][36] it seems not to have a significant influence on the amount given in dictator games (for reviews see [37] and [38]). This will be probed here further.…”